[fristechill]

I share the sentiment however the grain of truth here is that it does take a lot of effort to appear normal. The essence of being normal is trying to appear normal which is what most people are engaged in most of the time.

The hidden motivation behind this is fear of other people and the fear of evil which for most people has all but conquered their love of reality, truth, and so on.

If one does have other genuine interests and pursuits (for example foreign languages) then the task of appearing normal is harder. So the implication that he isn't smart enough to be normal is in this sense correct.

Which by the by suggests that motivation is the key to learning, not attention control, repetition, particular books, starting young or the other usual suspects and methods. These are downstream from motivation.